Communication Breakdown
by Thanfiction
Summary: The hardest things to realize are the ones you've known all along.


There was always tension between Bobby and John. Like damn near every Hunter out there, John needed him. He needed a human search engine of the insane and impossible he could call at four in the morning asking what could substitute for goat's blood and be found in your average Taco Bell walk-in freezer and get an answer in under fifteen seconds. He needed a body shop that stocked parts for a '67 Impala and didn't ask about bloodstains on the upholstery. He needed a babysitter who didn't ask why his eight year old could field-strip a Desert Eagle.

Still, John wasn't an idiot.

He saw the way Bobby looked at the boys. At him. At him about the boys. There had been talks. Talks being a euphemism. But John needed him, and Bobby knew whose boys they were, and that was that.

Except that after Sam walked away, the pieces began coming together that said there was more. Granted, it took a while. Stages of grieving, they called it. He knew them well.

Denial. The part where Sam will come back, of course, come back because they need him, come back because they still haven't avenged Mary, come back because John will lose the last shreds of sanity if something happens to him while he's out there among the soft squishy stupid people who would walk right into a room with flickering lights and test the switch with their back to the shadows.

Anger. Trashing a motel room so completely The Who would have been proud. Screaming at Dean, at the pizza delivery boy, at Yellow-Eyes, at himself, at Sam, at Dean, at himself, at Fate, at himself, at Dean, at the fucking Dink who had glanced one off his helmet and not been able to aim square enough to make this all moot, at himself, at anything bloody that was out there now with half an idea that it was a good thing they'd run into a Winchester armed with nothing but a latte and multiple-choice test. At himself.

Bargaining. If he and Dean completely cleaned house on Northern Cali. If he found Yellow-Eyes. If he was willing to consider correspondence college. If he apologized. Except he couldn't. But if he did. If he made a deal, found a witch. He had so much to trade for a protection spell. Maybe even a crossroads…no. Had to save that. You only have one ace. Two sons, but only one ace, and it's only the maybe of his nightmares that he never really got Sam out of there in time and Yellow-Eyes is just biding, that you've seen flashes of black eyes and smirks from too many teachers and pediatricians and waitresses with their hands on his soft brown head.

Depression. Half the first semester in a hunting cabin in Nofuckinganywhere, Idaho, holed up with Johnny and Jack for a while and then that shit out of canned peaches he learned to make two hundred clicks outside Saigon that tastes like hot piss and makes the weeks go by like greybrown hours. Groceries that just show up at the front door with notes in Dean's handwriting on various motel stationary. Vengeful spirit in Tuscon. Sammy's ok. Werewolf in Newport Beach. Sammy's ok. Poltergeist in Billings. Sammy's ok. Waiting for them to say demon in Palo Alto. Sammy's not ok.

Acceptance. First semester over, nothing to be done, can't keep this up for another four years. Moved on from worse. The kind of shave that needs scissors first. Three weeks of forced sobriety and boot-camp brutal numbers of pushups and asscrack of dawn swims and runs that you have to break ice for and back on the job; cheap motels and trying to find a rhythm with Dean that doesn't feel like a missing limb and generally winding up working apart anyway because there isn't one and it doesn't help that the boy - goddamnit he's 22, isn't he - radiates Sam's absence even worse than he does.

It takes a while, but then the pieces come together. Stanford fucking University fucking Pre-Law doesn't just call random burner phone numbers and offer full ride scholarships. Someone had to provide a stable address for mail to come and go. Someone had to help get and hide and fill out all those forms, pay application fees, compare schools and choose programs. Someone had to help him prep for the tests and get him there and back. Someone had to provide recommendations from respectable people - maybe successful South Dakota businessmen - who could vouch they knew Sam for years. Someone had to forge and cobble twenty half-assed patchwork school records in a dozen names and as many states into a good-looking transcript. Someone had to provide glowing letters from former teachers and extracurricular activities that weren't in six week spurts and didn't use the words "concerned" or "home environment."

Someone knew he wasn't stupid and met him at the gates of the yard with a loaded shotgun and didn't flinch when he pulled the old Colt M1911 and screamed you goddamned traitor you fucking stole my boy. There had always been tension between Bobby and John, but when Bobby didn't argue, when he just said "get off my property," it was more than that. It was a glimpse of Dean through the windshield and seeing how white his face was and the tension in his shoulders and then realizing who his sightline said he was more afraid for.

There is a point where something matters so much it doesn't matter any more because your heart and your brain and something deeper than either go supernova and collapse. Where the gun comes down and you spit in the Dakota dust and get in the car without saying a word until you're back to I-90 and then you just pick an exit with a big truck stop and say "Let me off here" with a lie that you'll keep in touch and a lie that you've got a car waiting and a lie that you're following a lead to Yellow-Eyes that's not really a lie because that's all you've really got.

And you've just realized that for eighteen years, it's all you've ever had.


End file.
